We need to go canvassing for this candidate, so we need you to sign this sheet to say that you are requesting a personal day today, so that you can go do this. We’ll make it up to you later,’” he said in the interview.

And I [thought], ‘Is this really legal? Can you require me to volunteer for a candidate that I can’t even vote for? I don’t live in that jurisdiction, that district that they are running from.

And that happened a lot around election time. The staff was — it was — I called it ‘mandatory volunteerism.’ And that happened to everybody. We were all told that we had to volunteer for this candidate on this day.

According to the article, the FEC “does not allow volunteers for federal candidates, including Presidential candidate[s], to be paid by third parties for volunteering, and state laws vary on the point. But the unions get around these rules by compensating volunteers to do general political organizing work and get-out-the vote efforts for the benefit of specific candidates.”

This is not news to those of you who followed our video of SEIU members admitting to being paid $20 to protest Obamacare – the SEIU often uses underhanded tactics to coerce people into advocating for their causes in what they often accuse other groups of using- “astroturf,” or artificial grassroots organizing.

Important to note as well is that the former SEIU member in the video has his identity protected to prevent the SEIU from retaliating against him. Not only did the union pressure him into doing something he clearly felt uncomfortable with, but they also left him with the impression that there would be retribution if he were to divulge this information. This isn’t a movie or a dramatic TV show- this is real life, and this man is afraid of being attacked by real life thugs.

The SEIU is operating illegally, and using threats of coercion to prevent people from exposing them. This former SEIU organizer has found a way to expose them without revealing his identity- with any luck his testimony will help encourage more SEIU members to speak out as well.